Sunday, August 2, 2009

The 21 Looniest Legislators II, Part One

Back in October 2006, I compiled a list of what I considered to be the 25 most insane lawmakers on Capitol Hill. A lot has changed since then and 14 of the 25 are no longer in Congress (more often than not because they were tossed out by voters). Since, as they say, only the names and faces change, I think it’s time for a fresh appraisal of the 21 legislators most worthy of four point restraints and rooms with really puffy canvas wallpaper. And don’t forget, folks, these people keep cropping up in Congress because you keep electing them.

21) Sue Myrick

Rep. Sue Myrick (R-WWE) of North Carolina’s 9th congressional district, in April of last year said, “Stop the madness!” and reminded Congress of what it ought to focus on, instead- professional wrestlers such as Ric Flair. Yes, who needed to talk about torture and extraordinary rendition, single payer health care, the imploding economy and the war on terror? Better to rhapsodize about the platinum-haired 16 time world champion and to give a spirited “Whoo hoo!” at the end. One has to wonder how many times Myrick and her constituents had actually bet on Flair’s championship matches when she wasn't trying to get Jimmy Carter's passport revoked. (Note: A year later, Flair’s son was busted for possession of heroin and less than five months after her paean to Ric Flair his daughter was arrested and tasered for fighting with her father and the police.)

20) Peter King

Peter King should’ve quit while he was ahead. On July 4th, he released a video on Youtube lambasting the media for its incessant coverage of Michael Jackson’s death while giving short shrift to veterans who had died in Iraq and Afghanistan. OK, hardly anyone would disagree with him and if he’d just stopped there maybe the video would’ve gotten a few hundred hits and then forgotten. But then the King of GOP had to go on a tirade against the King of Pop, tautologically calling him a “child molester” and a “pedophile” before Jackson was even buried, thereby setting a new high in Republican classiness.

King also isn’t above terror-mongering like it’s 2001. In the wake of the DHS’s report on right wing terrorism, he recently called for mosques and Muslims to be investigated for possible terrorist activity and lamenting that we have “too many mosques in this country.” Number of terrorist attacks coming from mosques and Muslims since 9/11: 0. Number of terrorist attacks coming from right wing scumbags who vote for people like King since 9/11: Too many for one person to document.

19) Virginia Foxx

Foxx newsflash: “There are no Americans who don’t have healthcare.” Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and a tooth fairy and affordable health care for all in your double-negative, conservative Candyland version of reality. Thank you for so tidily solving the health care crisis and setting 48,000,000 misguided souls straight. At the same health care press conference that featured some of the craziest Republican congresswomen, including Michele Bachmann and Jean Schmidt, Virginia Foxx of NC came perilously close to echoing George W. Bush’s stupendously stupid opinion that everyone has access to health care because all they have to do is walk into an emergency room.

Just for good measure, last April during debate on the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, more famously known as the Matthew Shepard Bill, Foxx said on the floor of the House that the commonly held belief that Matthew Shepard’s murder was a hate crime brought about by his sexual orientation was a hoax.

18) Phil Gingrey

You would think that Bill Frist would’ve had the market cornered on loonie physician/lawmakers. Fortunately, we have worthy successors such as Tom Coburn and Phil Gingrey (R-Lipton). And, let’s be honest, now, what does it say about a redneck clown who has no problem blasting wounded troops for their own abuse and neglect at Walter Reed yet publicly fellates Rush Limbaugh on his own radio show simply for saying, “Back off”?

And, really now, does it surprise anyone that Phil Gingrey would be one of the only members of the GOP to openly embrace the tea/douche baggery of wingnuts this past April 15th? Last June, Gingrey also fired some ill-advised shots over Dr. Howard Dean’s bow and missed by a mile. In the act of scatter shotting government health care reform, Gingrey couldn’t even get Dean’s wife’s name correct.

17) Dennis Kucinich

Ohio’s representative in the 10th Congressional district is clearly the looniest Democrat legislator on Capitol Hill. Among his most insane rants:

Reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.

Humane animal rights.

Banning offshore drilling.

Making the US the last nation to join the Kyoto Protocol.

Legalizing same sex marriage.

Still not convinced that Kucinich belongs in a rubber room? Listen to these other whacked-out positions:

And, oh, yeah, he was one of a very select several millions of Americans who may have seen an unidentified flying object over the last 62 years. To find another Democrat anywhere near as crazy as Kucinich, you’d have to look to Russ Feingold in the Senate. And don’t even get me started on the only person there to vote against the USA PATRIOT Act…!

16) House Minority Leader John Boehner

For years the Johnny Ray of politics, the Coppertone conservative may not be quite as corrupt as his predecessor Tom DeLay but he’s certainly more emotional. When he isn’t playing the Crying Game, he’s busy slamming bills on the floor in bad Republican kabuki theater and channeling Dick Cheney by calling Nancy Pelosi’s cap and trade bill a “pile of shit.”

A worthy lower chamber counterpart to his fellow sawhorse Mitch McConnell, Boehner has been a leading force in the fight against Obama’s evil, water-logged health care “reform” that includes a public option that would give the best health coverage to the wealthiest and the worst coverage to the poorest. To prove his point, Boehner assembled and unveiled a chart that looks strangely like a vinyl mat from Fisher Price’s Little People.

15) Danny Davis

In June of 2004, Illinois’ representative in its 7th district did something extraordinary along with several other members of Congress in the Dirksen Senate Office Building: He literally crowned right wing religious dictator and all-around zealot Sun Myung Moon as “none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent.” After the ceremony, when word leaked out about the bizarre ceremony that also saw Kurt Weldon honoring Moammar Khadafy, Davis tried to downplay the whole shebang even though he was the only Congressman in attendance who’d publicly expressed pride about it. In fact, Davis likened this travesty of the use of a federal office building to a baseball coach giving a “We’re the best team around!” pep talk to the boys before a big game, which doesn’t explain how and why Davis was photographed presenting Moon with a gold and jewel-encrusted crown with bowed head.

Moon, in case you never did your homework, has also claimed to have saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin and that the reformed dictators have posthumously vouched for him. If that one night alone doesn’t show you why Davis belongs on this list, try this on for size: Back in 2006, the oft-traveled Davis got his frequent flier miles fattened up by Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers, designated as a terrorist organization by the State Dept. The man who would be Roland Burris also thinks being black while driving should be a reason to drive in the wrong lane and that police officers stopping and ticketing him is an example of racial profiling. Hm. I wonder if a beer with the cops and Congressman Davis, brokered by his old congressional colleague Barack Obama, is in the offing?

14) Don Young

Most congressmen have no problem using their own penises to fuck over the American public but Alaska’s only representative, Don Young, has outsourced his own budgetary buttfuckery to an oosik, or the penis bone of a walrus. When he isn’t homoerotically swishing it about on the floor of the House like a bloated Mr. Sulu, this 17 term Congressman had until last year for over three decades helped Ted Stevens stuff tens of billions in earmark money into the Klondike (“stuff it like a turkey”, Young once proudly promised to do to the transportation bill.).

The epitome of Young’s rapacity came in 2005 when he had somehow managed to get for Alaska two bridges to nowhere that would’ve cost $400,000,000. A sobbing, moaning, shameless honey pot for every Alaskan oil company, Young was named to The League of Conservation Voters’ “Dirty Dozen” list for his record on the environment. Young has consistently voted to strike down any and every attempt to regulate the oil industry, create tighter emission standards for cars and seems bound and determined to turn all of Alaska into an oil-slicked semi-melted ice flow with two abandoned bridges.

13) Hal Rogers

Yet, while Don Young may be a loathsome cum dumpster for all the earmarks and corruption that have come to distinguish Alaska like potatoes identify Maine, who’s even more loathsome is Hal Rogers of Kentucky’s 5th district. Rogers, who's somehow flown under the blogosphere’s and MSM’s radar for decades, has been called “the prince of pork” and for good reason. Because not only has Mr. Rogers earmarked billions for his neighborhood, he even siphons money from DHS appropriations bills. Yet, even though his only other significant accomplishment was in getting the toll booths torn out of the old Daniel Boone Highway, Rogers was rewarded by the Governor by having the 63 mile-long highway renamed after him.

As the former chair of the Homeland Security appropriations subcommittee, Rogers had allowed every well-monied corporation, lobbyist and special interest group to turn his office into a virtual ATM machine while sucking out of the Homeland Security Budget and into his district money that would otherwise be put to better use protecting likelier targets against terrorist attacks. Does corruption equal insanity? Hardly ever but in Rogers’ case, an argument could be made that any guy who abuses his office to steer Homeland Security money to private corporations who grease his palm is, well, loony. No wonder Rolling Stone named him one of our ten worst Congressmen.

12) Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell

There are some senators, such as Ted Kennedy, who succeed over a long career with an impressive body of legislation that changes the lives of countless tens of millions. There are others who merely succeed because of their empty longevity. Then there are others like Mitch McConnell who aren’t distinguished for writing, sponsoring and ratifying legislation but simply for being a stumbling block to every attempt at progress or humanity.

The Teddy Ruxpin of every corporate interest that has kicked in to his PACs, McConnell has risen to the rank of the top Republican in the Senate for valiantly throwing his body under the wheels of every omnibus of progress. Under his watchful, jaundiced eye, the already cumbersome legislative process is made slower than the growth of Kentucky bluegrass in January for blocking a vast barge of Democratic legislation mainly in the interests of burnishing the Bush legacy. Under his “leadership", the Republicans lost fifteen seats in the Senate just in the last two elections with more losses projected for 2010. And there’s something more than vaguely despicable about a man who can rise to the heights of power over a long career just for constantly saying, “No.”

11) Jean Schmidt

From accusing the Chinese of drilling for oil in cahoots with Cuba off the Florida coast to publicly lambasting a senior lawmaker and decorated war veteran as the newest Congressman, Jean Schmidt has made a pretty persuasive case for the Dept. of Homeland Security to put a roof over Ohio’s 2nd district and designating it a lunatic asylum.

But let it not be said that Schmidt appeases the enemy. By April of this year, the Cincinnati Enquirer did some number crunching and discovered that by President Obama’s 100th day in office, she shared a distinction with John Boehner and Geoff Davis: Voting with the President 0% of the time.

5 Comments:

· HR 333, which would’ve impeached Dick Cheney for easily-proved war crimes.· The immediate repeal of NAFTA.· The immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq.· The immediate repeal of the USA Patriot Act.· Universal, single payer health coverage.

What's wrong with this? Surely you're writing satire or else you're way off on Kucinich !

Well, it was a comment on why and how the right wing are fond of calling Kucinich loonie, which he isn't of course. Like Sen. Feingold, Rep. Kucinich just happens to find himself on the right side of every issue and not because he's going for the populist posturing. He really, honestly believes that his positions are the best pones, not merely the most liberal or progressive ones. I suspect that, with Rep. Kucinich, the fact that his policy positions are liberal, progressive or Democratic is merely incidental. They're just the right positions.